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[Updated at 11:18 p.m. ET] Aimee Seaver, the mother of a first-grade girl at Sandy Hook and a fifth-grader who attends a different school, told CNN's Anderson Cooper that her children are having trouble dealing with what happened.
"It's a very rough night here," she said. "When your first-grader goes to bed and says, 'Mommy, is anyone from my class last year - are they all OK?' and you look at them and say, 'I'm not really sure,' it's a rough night to tell that to your 7-year-old."
Her younger daughter has asked a lot of questions about Principal Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, who was killed.
"She got wind very quickly that something was wrong with our principal, which we didn't tell her till just now that yes, she was definitely hurt and it wasn't good," Seaver said. "It's taking her a while. I think tomorrow will probably be harder for her.
"I also have a fifth-grader who came off the bus crying because she … had a sister who she was worried about, and … just basically left that school a few months ago. I think for a lot of those kids, they kind of are a little older and can get it a little bit faster, even though they weren't in it.
"So the questions, I think, are coming. They're not here, yet, especially for the littler ones. It started as I put them to bed tonight, the questions."
[Updated at 10:50 p.m. ET] Janet Vollmer, a kindergarten teacher at the school, says she locked her classroom doors and - to keep her students calm - read them a story until the police came.
Vollmer, her 19 students and the adult helpers in her classroom were not injured.
"You could hear what sounded like pops, gunshots. Of course, I'm not going to tell that to 5-year-olds, so I said to them, 'We're going over in a safe area,'" Vollmer told CNN's Anderson Cooper. "And we read a story and we kept them calm, did a lockdown drill, closed the doors, locked (them), covered the windows, and kept the children with us."
She said the children knew something unusual was going on.
"It didn't seem a natural thing (to the children), although we do practice drills," Vollmer said. "We said, 'We're not really sure, but we're going to be safe, because we're sitting over here and we're all together.'"
When asked how she kept cool, she said: "With 5-year-olds, you can't lose it. I've been doing this for a long time, it's my 18th year of teaching. My job was to keep them safe."
"After we got down to the firehouse, later on, as a lot of the events started to unfold throughout the day I think some of (the children) realized the magnitude of what was going on.," she said. "They saw other people upset. We just held them close until their parents came and we released them."
[Updated at 8:58 p.m. ET] Denise Correia says her daughter, a Sandy Hook Elementary second-grader who was not injured, heard the gunshots from the classroom she was in. The girl, while talking about the shooting with Correia, has been mentioning slain principal Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung "quite a lot."
"I think everyone's coping as best as they possibly can," Correia told CNN's Anderson Cooper. "I'm letting her talk. She's mentioned quite a bit about the principal, who many of us have worked with. I adored her. I worked with her personally with my business. That is one person I know we have lost on a personal level."
Correia said she has heard that her daughter's teacher, when the gunfire started, grabbed two kids from the hallway, put them into her classroom with other students, locked the door and gathered the students to a side of the room away from the gunfire. "She did a very heroic thing," Correia said of the teacher.
"The kids are going to suffer from this," Correia said. "... We lost a lot of babies today in this town, and there are a lot of very sad families."
[Updated at 8:20 p.m. ET] One injured victim, a female employee of the school, is "doing well," Connecticut State Police Lt. J. Paul Vance said.
[Updated at 7:53 p.m. ET] The public release of the victims' names may come on Saturday morning, Connecticut State Police Lt. J. Paul Vance says.
Vance said investigators have made preliminary identifications of the bodies, and that they've notified the appropriate families. But investigators want to make final, positive identifications before releasing the names to the media.
"It's a horrific scene," Vance said. "Between our mutual experience, we've never seen anything like this."
Vance said the next briefing from state police would be at 8 a.m. ET Saturday.
[Updated at 7:48 p.m. ET] U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Connecticut, says her thoughts and prayers are with the families.
"This really hits close to home," said DeLauro, who said she is visiting her grandchildren in Washington, D.C. "These beautiful young angels who had so much to live for - and it seems so senseless. Unthinkable that this could happen ,but it has, and now, as the president said, we come together, we wrap our arms around these families and hold them close to our hearts."
[Updated at 7:10 p.m. ET] Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, offered his prayers for the families of those affected by the Connecticut shooting, according to a release from the group.
The shooting "wrenches the hearts of all people," he said.
"Once again we speak against the culture of violence infecting our country even as we prepare to welcome the Prince of Peace at Christmas," Dolan said. "All of us are called to work for peace in our homes, our streets and our world, now more than ever."
[Updated at 6:51 p.m. ET] A law enforcement official familiar with the investigation says the three guns found at the shooting site were legally purchased by Nancy Lanza, the mother of the suspect in the shooting.
According to the law enforcement official, the Glock and Sig Sauer handguns were found inside the school with the deceased gunman. The Bushmaster was found in a car outside the school. The official did not know if the car was registered to the gunman, to his mother or to someone else.
The official echoed what other law enforcement officials have told CNN: That Adam Lanza was the suspected gunman, and that he died at the scene of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot.
[Updated at 6:44 p.m. ET] Three U.S. law enforcement officials, from different agencies, separately tonight identified the suspected shooter as Adam Lanza, contrary to what investigators had said previously. It is not clear what caused the confusion among investigators.
His older brother, Ryan, was taken into custody for general questioning from a home in Hoboken, New Jersey. Officials did not label Ryan Lanza as a suspect. It is unclear when he may be released.
One of the officials say Adam's father was also taken in for similar questioning. There is no indication that the father will be charged. The official noted the father has remarried and lives with his new wife in a residence in the general area of Connecticut not too far from where his ex-wife lived.
[Updated at 6:43 p.m. ET] CNN's Susan Candiotti is talking to investigators at the scene as they piece together exactly what happened and when. She says she's learned that the mother of the suspected shooter, Nancy Lanza, was found dead in the suspect's home in Newtown.
"Earlier we had information that she was found in the classroom. However, now I'm being told that in fact her body was found at the suspect's residence," Candiotti said. "We don't know whether she also lived there. We also don't know the timeline - when was she killed? Was she killed before the shooting began at the school? These are the things that authorities are still trying to piece together."
[Updated at 6:02 p.m. ET] "Evil visited this community today," Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy just told reporters in Newtown. "And it's too early to speak of recovery, but each parent, each sibling, each member of the family has to understand that Connecticut - we're all in this together.
"We'll do whatever we can to overcome this event. We will get through it. But this is a terrible time for this community and these families."
[Updated at 5:14 p.m. ET] The mother of the suspected shooter was found dead in her son's residence in Newtown, a law enforcement source with detailed knowledge of the investigation told CNN. CNN had previously identified the mother as Nancy Lanza, a teacher at the Sandy Hook Elementary, according to law enforcement sources.
The source also told CNN there was no body found in the house searched by authorities in Hoboken, New Jersey. Two law enforcement sources say a man was taken away from questioning from that house. He is believed to be the brother of the shooter, according to the sources.
The first law enforcement source says the school shooter was dressed in "black battle fatigues and a military vest."
The Bushmaster .223 found at the scene is a semi automatic weapon, the source says. Two other weapons found were handguns, a Sig-Sauer and a Glock.
[Updated at 5:10 p.m. ET] We just learned that Governor Dannel P. Malloy will be speaking at Treadwell Park in Newtown, Connecticut, at 6:00 p.m. ET.
[Updated at 5:04 p.m. ET] We've just received a statement from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan about the shooting:
"School shootings are always incomprehensible and horrific tragedies. But words fail to describe today's heartbreaking and savage attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School. As the father of two children in elementary school, I can barely imagine the anguish and losses suffered today by the Newtown community.
"Our hearts and prayers go out to every parent, child, teacher, staff member, and administrator at Sandy Hook and the surrounding community. And our thanks go out to every teacher, staff member, and first responder who cared for, comforted, and protected children from harm, often at risk to themselves. We will do everything in our power to assist and support the healing and recovery of Newtown."
[Updated at 5:01 p.m. ET] Law enforcement officials are not prepared to identify the shooter right now, Connecticut State PoliceLt. J. Paul Vance said in a press conference.
Vance said that they are working diligently at the crime scene as well as with the medical examiner to identify the victims.
"We will leave no stone unturned," Vance added about the entire investigation.
[Updated at 4:54 p.m. ET] We are now being told there was no body found in the Hoboken, New Jersey, home as had been previously reported.
[Updated at 4:23 p.m. ET] We have learned that Connecticut police have searched the suspected gunman's home and place of employment in the wake of Friday's mass shooting, Connecticut State Police Lt. Paul Vance told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.
They have also interviewed his friends, relatives and "everyone who possibly had any connection with him whatsoever," he said.
[Updated at 4:11 p.m. ET] Police did not discharge their weapons at any time when responding at the school, police spokesman Lt. Paul Vance told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. However, he could not confirm whether the suspected shooter - who died at the scene - killed himself, saying that would have to be determined by the medical examiner.
[Updated at 4:07 p.m. ET] Mark Kelly, who's lived through this kind of horror, has issued a statement. He's the husband of former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords who was shot in the head at a massacre in Tucson, Arizona, in January 2011. Here's what he said:
I just woke up in my hotel room in Beijing, China, to learn that another mass shooting has taken place - this time at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. My thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims and the entire community of Newtown, CT. I just spoke to Gabby, and she sends her prayers from Tucson.
As we mourn, we must sound a call for our leaders to stand up and do what is right. This time our response must consist of more than regret, sorrow, and condolence. The children of Sandy Hook Elementary School and all victims of gun violence deserve leaders who have the courage to participate in a meaningful discussion about our gun laws - and how they can be reformed and better enforced to prevent gun violence and death in America. This can no longer wait.
[Updated at 3:56 p.m. ET] The principal killed was Dawn Hochsprung. We received this photo via Newtown.Patch.com.
[Updated at 3:54 p.m. ET] Three guns were found at the scene, CNN's Susan Candiotti reports. According to a law enforcement source, the third weapon found on the scene was a .223 Bushmaster. The other weapons, previously reported, are a Glock, and a Sig-Sauer. No word on the models of Glock or Sig-Sauer.
[Updated at 3:51 p.m. ET] A federal law enforcement source tells CNN's John King the information from the scene is that the shooter arrived and headed directly toward and to his mother's classroom. That and the other information now emerging - another family member killed, police interviews - lead them to believe his mother was the primary target. But they note he also came armed with clear intention of mass killing.
[Updated at 3:45 p.m. ET] There were a total of 27 people dead at the school, Lt. Paul Vance of the Connecticut State Police said.
Six adults, 20 children and the shooter were killed. Eighteen students were pronounced dead at the scene, and two others died at the hospital, said Lt. Paul Vance of the Connecticut State Police. The six adults died at the scene.
[Updated at 3:43 p.m. ET] Connecticut State Police Lt. Paul Vance has just said that the shooting took place in one section of the school and in two rooms.
[Updated at 3:33 p.m. ET] Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy called the mass shooting "a tragedy of unspeakable terms."
"Earlier today a tragedy of unspeakable terms played itself out in this community," Malloy said, adding that "you can never be prepared for this kind of incident.
"A number of our citizens, beautiful children, had their life taken away from them as well as adults whose responsibility it was to educate and supervise those children," Malloy said.
[Updated at 3:22 p.m. ET] It appears that another member of the alleged shooter's family is dead. A senior law enforcement official familiar with the investigation says a brother of the alleged shooter was found dead in a home searched in Hoboken, New Jersey. We already knew the suspect's mother was found dead in the elementary school.
(6:43 p.m. ET update - CNN's Susan Candiotti is talking to investigators and has now learned that the mother of the suspected shooter was found dead in the suspect's home in Newtown. No brother of the suspect has been found dead, and no one has been found dead in the home in Hoboken, New Jersey, investigators say.)
[Updated at 3:16 p.m. ET] From the president: "I offered Gov. Malloy my condolences on behalf of the nation."
The president appears to be emotional, he's wiping his eye.
Here's more of what he's saying:
"We've endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years. Each time I learn the news I react not as a president but as anybody else would as a parent.
"That was especially true today.
"I know there's not a parent in America that doesn't feel the same overwhelming grief that I do.
"The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old.
"They had their entire lives ahead of them, birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own.
Obama sighed.
"Among the fallen were also teachers - men and women who devoted their lives to helping our children fulfill their dreams. Our hearts are broken today for the parents and grandparents, sisters and brothers of these children and the families of the adults we lost.
"Our hearts are broken for the parents of the survivors as well, for as blessed as they are to have their children home tonight, they know that their children's innocence has been torn away from them too early, and there are no words that will ease their pain.
"As a country, we have been through this too many times. Whether it's an elementary school in Newtown, or a shopping mall in Oregon, or a temple in Wisconsin, or a movie theater in Aurora, or a street corner in Chicago - these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods, and these children are our children. And we're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.
"This evening Michelle and I will do what every parent in America will do - hug our children a little tighter and tell them that we love them.
"There are families in Connecticut that cannot do that tonight and they need all of us tonight.
"May God bless the memory of the victims and in the words of scripture heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds."
[Updated at 3:14 p.m. ET] The president will talk soon. You can watch him on our live stream here.
[Updated at 3:12 p.m. ET] President Obama has ordered flags to be lowered to half-staff as a mark of respect for the victims "of the senseless acts of violence perpetrated on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut," according to a release from the White House.
[Updated at 3:09 p.m. ET] The suspect's mother was shot and killed at the school, according to source close to the investigation. She was a teacher there.
And we now know that Ryan Lanza, the suspected gunman, was 24.
(6:44 p.m. ET update - (Three U.S. law enforcement officials say the suspected gunman was Adam Lanza, not his brother Ryan Lanza as officials had previously said. It is not clear what caused the confusion among investigators. Ryan Lanza was picked up from a home in Hoboken, New Jersey, on Friday and has been questioned but has not been labeled as a suspect, officials now say. Also, CNN's Susan Candiotti is talking to investigators and has now learned that the mother of the suspected shooter was found dead in the suspect's home in Newtown)
[Updated at 3:01 p.m. ET] The principal and guidance counselor at Sandy Hook Elementary School were both killed during the shooting, according to a witness that spoke to CNN.
[Updated at 2:52 p.m. ET] We have just learned via a tweet from House Speaker John Boehner that flags at the U.S. Capitol will be lowered.
[tweet https://twitter.com/SpeakerBoehner/status/279674241979400192%5D
[Updated at 2:47 p.m. ET] President Obama will make a statement on the tragedy at 3:15 p.m. ET. We'll have that live on CNN TV and right here.
[Updated at 2:45 p.m. ET] Various locations are being used as staging areas around Newtown. This is outside the Newtown Methodist Church near the school where a woman is hugging a child.
[Updated at 2:39 p.m. ET] Federal law enforcement officials have told CNN's John King that the shooting happened quickly and happened in a concentrated area.
[Updated at 2:32 p.m. ET] Connecticut Gov. Malloy will be in Newtown and talk about the tragedy today at 3:30 p.m. ET.
[Updated at 2:20 p.m. ET] We are now hearing from CNN's Mary Snow, who is reporting from outside the suspect's home, that dozens of law enforcement officials are on the scene.
Neighbors are "shaken," Snow said.
[Updated at 2:11 p.m. ET] CNN's Susan Candiotti has just reported that a law enforcement official tells her the suspect is named Ryan Lanza and he is in his 20s.
[Updated at 2:09 p.m. ET] We're hearing even more devastating news out of Newtown, Connecticut. CNN's Susan Candiotti has been told that 18 to 20 of the dead are children.
[Updated at 2:07 p.m. ET] CNN's Jessica Yellin is reporting that we're likely to hear from President Obama today on the school shooting, according to a senior administration official. We don't know when our where we may hear from President Obama.
[Updated at 2:04 p.m. ET] Lisa Procaccini, the parent of an 8-year-old at the school, tells CNN that her daughter said school officials kept her calm during the shooting and told her the loud noise was hammering going on.
Eventually police came in and let her daughter and her teacher leave the school building.
"I'm even kind of numb about what's going on," she told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "I'm in a state of shock. I don't know how Im going to handle having [my daughter] know ... about the whole situation."
[Updated at 1:57 p.m. ET] The death toll is closer to 30 than 20, a federal law enforcement source in Washington told CNN's John King. Most of those killed are children, the source said.
The source also said the suspected gunman, who is dead, had a connection to the school. He would not elaborate on that connection. The source is in touch with authorities on the scene.
[Updated at 1:53 p.m. ET] Congresswoman-elect Elizabeth Esty, who was recently won a seat representing a district that includes Newtown, Connecticut, just released the following statement on the tragedy:
As a mother, I can only begin to imagine what the students, parents, teachers and staff of Sandy Hook Elementary must be experiencing. My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone impacted by this horrific tragedy. While details are still emerging, I hope for the safety and well being of the children, teachers and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary and for the Newtown community.
[Updated at 1:51 p.m. ET] We have just learned that the suspected shooter is 20-years-old, a law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation tells CNN's Susan Candiotti.
[Updated at 1:47 p.m. ET] A few more details from the White House press briefing earlier. White House spokesman Jay Carney said while today is not the day to debate gun policy, an assault weapons ban "does remain a commitment" of President Obama.
[Updated at 1:45 p.m. ET] We are now learning that a male is being questioned by investigators, but he is not being called a suspect, CNN's Susan Candiotti reports.
[Updated at 1:42 p.m. ET] Connecticut State Police Lt. Paul Vance said the shooter is dead inside the school.
[tweet https://twitter.com/ljanyNT/status/279657796985823232%5D
Vance said there are a number of fatalities that includes both children and adults. He did not add more details about how many people were killed during the school shooting.
[Updated at 1:41 p.m. ET] Police have now begun their briefing on the shooting.
[Updated at 1:32 p.m. ET] We're hearing more from the scene of the massacre through tweets and interviews.
[tweet https://twitter.com/HenaDaniels/status/279651793150033922]
[tweet https://twitter.com/johnfrey/status/279652142447476736%5D
[Updated at 1:23 p.m. ET] President Obama has spoken to FBI Director Robert Mueller and Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy to get the latest information and express his condolences, White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
[Updated at 1:21 p.m. ET] We're now hearing that it may be a while for the briefing from the police.
[Updated at 1:17 p.m. ET] This was the scene from the air earlier, taken by News 12 Connecticut, with emergency vehicles in the school parking lot.
[Updated at 1:09 p.m. ET] The police are set to give a news conference soon where we'll learn more. We'll bring that to you as soon as it starts.
[Updated at 1:07 p.m. ET] Here's the chilling account told to CNN's Meredith Artley of what happened at the school.
[Updated at 12:59 p.m. ET] Many people are talking again about gun control. But White House spokesman Jay Carney isn't joining in for now.
"I think it's important on a day like today to view this as I know the president, as a father does and I as a father and others who are parents certainly do, which is to feel enormous sympathy for families that are affected and to do everything we can to support state and local law enforcement and support those who are enduring what appears to be a very tragic event. There is, I'm sure, will be, rather, a day for discussion of the usual Washington policy debates but I don't think today is that day.
[Updated at 12:57 p.m. ET] From the News Times reporter at the school:
[tweet https://twitter.com/ljanyNT/status/279644862771523585]
[Updated at 12:48 p.m. ET] "Close to 20" people have been killed, including at least 10 children, a law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation says.
[Updated at 12:47 p.m. ET] President Barack Obama has been informed of the school shooting in Connecticut and will receive regular updates throughout the day, the White House said on Friday.
[Updated at 12:27 p.m. ET] The mom who spoke to CNN's Meredith Artley said she heard "at least 100 rounds" being fired.
The shooting began about 9:35 a.m., the parent said. There was a "pop pop pop" in the hall outside the room. Three people went out of the room into the hall where the sounds had come from. "Only one person came back," we were told.
The witness told Artley that she then called 911. She said she never saw the shooter but she later was escorted outside the room past two bodies lying in blood.
[Updated at 12:20 p.m. ET] A third-grader describes the shooting to WTNH:
[Updated at 12:16 p.m. ET] Two adults were killed, according to a parent who was at the school during the incident, and who talked to our colleague Meredith Artley.
[Updated at 12:12 p.m. ET] We just got this from U.S. Senator-elect Chris Murphy:
"I am shocked and saddened by the horrific news from Sandy Hook Elementary School this morning, and I pray that kids, teachers, staff, and families reach safety as quickly as possible. While we don't have much information right now, our thoughts are with the victims and their loved ones."
[Updated at 12:05 p.m. ET] The shooter's body is in a classroom, a source with knowledge of the investigation tells CNN's Susan Candiotti.
[Updated at 12:02 p.m. ET] Multiple local media are reporting there are fatalities. We're checking.
[Updated at noon ET] News Times reporter Libor Jany reports that all Newtown schools are on lockdown.
[tweet https://twitter.com/ljanyNT/status/279629101160087553]
[Updated at 11:58 a.m. ET] Danbury Hospital confirms it's treating some victims. It says this on its Facebook page:
To date, three patients have been transported to Danbury Hospital from the scene. Out of abundance of caution and not because of any direct threat Danbury Hospital is under lockdown. This allows us simply to focus on the important work at hand.
[Updated at 11:54 a.m. ET] Connecticut House Rep. John Frey has nieces and a nephew at the school and is tweeting updates.
[tweet https://twitter.com/johnfrey/status/279626856444067840]
[Updated at 11:47 a.m. ET] The dad of a student at the school told CNN affiliate WTNH there were about 600 pupils in the building at the time of the shooting.
[Updated at 11:45 a.m. ET] At least three people were wounded and are in "very serious" condition at a hospital in Danbury, Connecticut, that town's mayor, Mark Boughton told CNN. He couldn't say whether the victims were children.
[Updated at 11:44 a.m. ET] Andrew Doba, Director of Communications with Connecticut Governor Malloy's office, says they are coordinating with local authorities and state police. They continue to monitor developments in Newtown. The governor is in Connecticut today.
[Updated at 11:40 a.m. ET] We're getting live pictures from the scene from CNN affiliates.
[Updated at 11:34 a.m. ET] The shooter is dead, a source with knowledge of the investigation, tells CNN's Susan Candiotti.
Police have recovered two weapons from him, the source added.
It's not known whether police killed the alleged shooter or he took his own life. The source says one weapon recovered is a Glock and the other is a Sig Sauer.
[Updated at 11:27 a.m. ET] The Hartford Courant, citing police, said an unspecified number of people had been shot. The nature of their injuries was unclear, the newspaper said. But it cited police in saying one person had "numerous gunshot wounds."
[Updated at 11:19 a.m. ET] Affiliate WTNH says children are being taken to a nearby firehouse.
[tweet https://twitter.com/WTNH/status/279620094768852992]
[Updated at 11:10 a.m. ET] Details are still really sketchy, but we now have a photo from the Newtown Bee of children being led from the scene.
[Updated at 11:03 a.m. ET] We're still getting details in of how many people may have been hurt.
Newtown is southwest of Hartford:
[Updated at 10:53 a.m. ET] Sandy Hook school is on lockdown and students are not being evacuated, a Newtown police spokesman tells us.
[Posted at 10:30 a.m. ET] Breaking news coming in - Connecticut State Police are responding to reports of a shooting at a Newtown elementary school in southwestern Connecticut, according to police spokesman Lt. Paul Vance.
We'll bring you more details as soon as we get them.
Our affiliates in the area are saying the school is the Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Angela, you need to stop generalizing. Not all African American children see this every day. Stop drinking the kool aid. Stop saying things that does not pertain to this situation and become more informed on things.
This is a really sad situation and we should be praying as a nation that these things stop happening instead of spouting off all sorts of things. Cling, cling, cling of the tinkling cymbal.
Can we start judging gun laws now ? or does it have to be your child that dies before you start thinking about this
The only guns that should be allowed are those that the founders wanted-single shot hunting rifles and single shot pistols-all automatic weapons need to be outlawed-this is just common sense-people-any other argument is stupid-America has one of the highest murder homicide rates in the world because of stupid gun laws and zealous morons like those in the NRA-England has few guns whatsoever and has less than 100 gun murders a year-we have over 14,000 becuase of lobby groups that back extreme positions like the NRA-
To the President:
Please do not stop the WAR and put the last dime of our tax money into it.
When people got layoff, don't have jobs, outsourcing, gas going up, day to day living becoming harder, medical and other treatments are going up...etc etc (I can provide long list).
In this situation when people don't find or see any solution or hope, eventually they become person like this shooter.
Please STOP this so called WAR nonsense & make companies harder to impossible to outsource their jobs, things will be changed.
And the NRA allow people to buy a bazooka, grenades and 1000 round machine gun for......hunting? Oh yeah, that grizzly bear needs 1000 rounds to be killed.... That tuna can only be killed with a grenade...
That is entirely incorrect.
A normal citizen cannot purchase a bazooka, grenades or a machine gun.
Please educate yourself before spouting off like a moron.
You need special licensing to purchase said items and they are INSANELY expense and hard to come by.
A fully automatic rifles costs upwards of $20,000.
The only people in possession of assault rifles and grenades are the government and criminals.
Upstanding citizens like myself, do not.
@porktornado – You can kill 27 people in 5 minutes with a baseball bat, knife or any other implement you named. Plus you can do it from a distance. The religious nuts and NRA idiots have totally messing this country up.
I read some of the comments people were saying. They talk about how if there was a ban on firearms, this wouldn't have happened, blah, blah, blah. Listen here, the lady that pushed her car into a lake with her two kids in it didn't need a gun to kill 2 people like this guy. People who are crazy, are gonna be crazy, and people who are criminals are going to disobey the law. THAT'S WHAT MAKES THEM CRIMINALS. A ban on firearms will just disarm all of us law abiding citizens, so when a criminal breaks into our house with a gun (which he obtained illegally, cuz he's a criminal), all we'll have to defend ourselves is a kitchen knife.
the human heart can be such a deadly weapon..why do people want to kill others? Especially children..what do they ever gain from this?
SCREW YOUR STUPID 2nd Amendment. The 2nd Amendment was not written with MACHINE GUNS in hand, you jerk. What about those children's right to life. Yes guns kill, yes bullets kill and yes people kill. WHAT IS YOUR POINT. Those children are dead and you are on the side of defending those evil terrorists that killed those kids.
This is getting worst by the minute...What a terrible tragedy!!!! This madness has to stop...........How sad.....
Peole need to get off their soap boxes regarding gun control. We do not ban cars because people drive drunk and kill. We try to get people to stop driving drunk. Same thing here. We need to get these sick people from having handguns and thinking it's ok to shoot peole and children. Keep this in perspective.
No, we don't bad cars. But we make it illegal to drive drunk. And that's a stupid comparison by the way. People don't need to guns to get around in their daily lives. Why do people need guns? Other than to shoot other people that is.
Come on...people...how can anyone NOT believe there needs to be more control...of course the guns don't kill on their own...but there is absolutely NO reason for these types of guns OTHER than to kill people and kill lot's of people quickly. Of course the people that do this are sick and there are the ones to blame but why help them? Why give them the tools to feed their sickness???? Do you really think that this crazy sick person is going to run into a school...a crowded mall or movie theatre and kill lot's of people in a short period of time with a knife? These type of guns need to be GONE........you don't need assault rifles, etc. to protect your home and your family.
I hope CNN and other media will not name or show the face of the killer(s). This is what they are looking for and they do not deserve a second of air time. Instead please focus on the victims and on the brave people who came to the rescue.
I am tired of hearing Guns Don't Kill People. Ask the parents of the kids who just lost their lives! Yes the owner was probably a loose canon but if he didn't have the f-in gun in the first place maybe he might have just jumped off a bridge and left the kids alone. In addition, why are we passing laws that it's OK to shoot first and ask questions later? A nice society we are brewing! Peace on Earth and, well that's not happening.
I guess we will have to have armed police officers in bulletproof armor stationed at every school now.
Knife attack at Chinese school wounds 22 children just yesterday....guns don't kill ppl, knives don't kill people, ball bats don't kill ppl, cars don't kill people, forks don't kill people.
Perfect example of the difference between guns and knives. The US has China beat on making it easy for it's citizens to kill each other. That knife wielding guy couldn't even kill one kid? Amateur. Come to the US where we give our citizens the right tools to do the job.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
NEW YORK, N.Y. – The last remaining national bookstore chain is being taken off the shelf and dusted off for sale.
Founder Barnes & Noble's founder Leonard Riggio disclosed in a regulatory filing Monday that he wants to acquire the company's stores and website, but not the business that makes the Nook e-reader or the company's college bookstores. No price was disclosed.
It's the latest attempt by a company founder to take back control of all or part of a company he started. Best Buy's co-founder Richard Schulze is mulling a bid for the electronics retailer, and Michael Dell earlier this month announced a $24.4 billion deal to take the namesake computer company he founded private.
The deals are a way for executives to exert more control over companies without the need to run everything by shareholders. In all of these cases, the founders have devoted decades to the businesses, and the companies are struggling to survive in a changing retail landscape.
"When you've got control outside public eye or public market, you can invest and translate your strategy at your own pace," said Peter Wahlstrom, analyst at Morningstar. "It's him believing he can run it better by himself without the distraction of the digital side. He believes the brand has value that's not being recognized by investors."
Barnes & Noble, based in New York, has been struggling to find its place as more readers have shifted to electronic books and competition has grown from discount stores and online competitors. The company, which has 689 bookstores in 50 states and 674 college bookstores, has been trying to avoid the fate of its former rival Borders Group, which did not adapt to the growing threat of the Internet and e-books and went out of business in 2011.
Technically, Riggio, who is chairman of the chain, didn't found the original Barnes & Noble store in New York when it opened in 1917. But he bought the store and brand name in the 1970s. Under his leadership, Barnes & Noble became a one of the pioneers of the "big box" format in which national chains would set up large stores that offer a wide selection of merchandise under one roof.
The company also pioneered bookselling in general. In 1975 it began offering 40 per cent off New York Times bestsellers, which was then unheard of in the bookselling business.
Throughout the 1980s, the company expanded through acquisitions. It bought B Dalton Bookseller in 1987 and BookStop in 1989. Then it went public in 1993 and established its Web site in 1997.
But the company was hurt by Internet retailers like Amazon.com and discounters such as Wal-Mart and Costco expanding their book selections. Barnes & Noble has been proactive, investing heavily in its Nook e-book readers and a digital library. It struck a deal with Microsoft last April to create a Nook subsidiary. But the Nook faces competition from other devices like Apple's iPad Mini, Amazon's Kindle and Google's Nexus tablet.
And the unit is far from profitable. Earlier this month, the company said it expects Nook media revenue of less than $3 billion in fiscal 2013. It also anticipates a loss for the unit before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization to exceed the $262 million loss recorded in its 2012 fiscal year.
This follows a report from the retailer in January that its Nook unit revenue fell 12.6 per cent to $311 million during the critical holiday period. Overall sales during the holiday period fell 10.9 per cent at bookstores and online compared with a year ago. Barnes & Noble is scheduled to report third-quarter results Thursday.
Barnes & Noble bookstores, though, have been profitable even though they're facing falling sales. The company has broadened its offerings in stores and sells more high-margin games, educational toys and other non-book items to improve results.
In its fiscal second recent quarter ended Oct. 27, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in the retail segment — which includes the stores and the Web site that Riggio wants to buy — doubled to $28 million, helped by selling higher margin products. Revenue from that segment fell 3 per cent to $996 million. Overall, the company's net income totalled $2.2 million, up from a prior-year loss of $6.6 million. Revenue was nearly flat at $1.88 billion.
Monday's filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said that Riggio, who is Barnes & Noble's largest shareholder with nearly 30 per cent of the company's shares, will seek to negotiate a price with the company's board and pay for the deal with cash and debt. Riggio is making the offer in order to facilitate the company's review of its strategic options for separating its Nook business, according to the filing.
Barnes & Noble said the offer will be considered by a committee of three independent directors. But there is no set timetable for the process.
Morningstar's Wahlstrom said the deal makes sense considering the retail side of the business has been overshadowed by investments needed for the Nook business. He added that the move by Riggio was not unexpected: His large stake in the company — and history with it — would likely make finding extra financing the company needs easier.
"Riggio feels like he can run it better than just about anyone else, and with four decades of operating history there's not much reason to believe that he can't," he said.
On the news, Barnes & Noble shares rose $1.18, or 8.8 per cent, to $14.69. Its shares have traded in a 52-week range of $10.45 in mid-April to $26 later that same month.


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The Product
Protect your HTC Desire 820 with a one-piece, impact resistant hard shell case featuring an extremely slim profile. The lay-flat feature protects the front of your tablet by extending the bezel above the screen.
The Philosophy
Every Cyankart product is made-to-order and hand-inspected from corner to corner. With this, we can: ensure high-quality products, remain environmentally conscious by preventing excess waste, and most importantly, offer our employees a livable wage and health benefits. We promise 100% satisfaction.
Product Details
Manufactured by:
Cyankart India Pvt. Ltd.
I-26, DLF Industrial Area, Phase - 1,
Faridabad, Haryana - 121003
Country of Origin: India


text:
Sealey S1215D WallDrive Socket Deep 1/2in Sq Drive - 15mm
Cold-forged Chrome Vanadium steel socket.
Hardened and tempered for added strength.
Cold-forged Chrome Vanadium steel socket. Hardened and tempered for added strength. Chrome plated in half chrome, half satin finish with knurled ring for extra grip with oily fingers. WallDrive socket configuration.
- One of a comprehensive range of Premier Hand Tools, suitable for daily professional use.
- Cold-forged Chrome Vanadium steel socket.
- Hardened and tempered for added strength.
- Chrome plated in half chrome, half satin finish with knurled ring for extra grip with oily fingers.
- WallDrive socket configuration.
- Model No: S1215D
- Depth: Deep
- Drive: 1/2inSq
- Material: Chrome Vanadium
- Nett Weight: 0.00Kg
Manufacturers Warranty: Life
About Sealey:
Founded in 1978, Sealey is known internationally as a leading brand of professional tools and workshop equipment. The Sealey range of tools and equipment is designed very much with the professional user in mind. Sealey's core brands include Siegen, Sealey and Premier, representing good, better and best respectively. Whichever level you choose, quality assurance is always guaranteed.
Click & Collect
Although we are working to bring a 'Click & Collect' option to our customers, it isn't here just yet.
We therefore cannot currently allow orders to be collected from our office or warehouses, but this option will be available in the near future!
For now, please see below for your delivery options.
Delivery Services and Prices
You can select from 2 different delivery services; standard, next day. The charge for each service is dependent on your total order value. See table below.
Delivery options
Order value inc. VAT
|Under £100
|Over £100
|Standard 2-5 Working Day delivery usually within 48hr - Main Courier: ROYAL MAIL
|Fast Next Working Day delivery (on orders received before 1pm) - Main Courier: DPD
|Quick 2 Working Days delivery (on orders received before 1pm) - Main Courier: DPD
|2-5 Working Day* Northern Ireland & Highlands - Main Courier: ROYAL MAIL
|OTHER ZONES* Usually within 5 working days - Main Courier: ROYAL MAIL
|INTERNATIONAL DELIVERIES* see below for details - Courier: ROYAL MAIL and other specialist international services
|contact us
for a quote
|contact us
for a quote
*Premium delivery options not available for 2-5 Working Day & other zones.
The Other zones option is for UK only postcodes: AB36-AB38, HS1-HS9, IV36-IV49, IV51-IV56, KA27-KA28, KW15-KW17, PA41-PA49, PA60-PA78, PH41-PH44, ZE1-ZE3.
NOTE: Please also note that some large and/or heavy items may be more expensive to 2-5 Working Day & Other zones delivery addresses and may include some offshore locations such as Isle Of Man, Isle of Scilly, Isle of Wight and Ireland.
Delivery time estimates stated are for working days (Mon - Fri).
Please allow 5 working days for standard delivery. We cannot offer delivery to BFPO addresses.
International Deliveries including the Irish Republic & Channel Islands
MAD4TOOLS.COM provide an exceptional personal and custom international delivery service. Whether you want just one small order delivered to the other side of the world or a consignment of pallets, we can provide a delivery service fully insured and trackable to suit your needs.
We offer delivery services to countries all around the world, though due to the varying nature of product weights, dimensions and delivery services we invite you to contact us for a personal and custom delivery quote for your specific order delivered abroad.
Please make an enquiry for your international delivery using the below methods of contact and include what it is you are looking at ordering (including quantity) and your full delivery address including Zip/Postal code where applicable.
- Send an enquiry using our online contact us form.
- Email us at email@example.com.
Please consider that if you are having the goods delivered to a country in the EU then UK VAT rates apply and if you are having the goods delivered outside the EU then UK VAT does not apply, though this is only the case if we deliver the goods outside the EU or have onward shipment proof of the goods leaving the EU.
NOTE: for deliveries outside the EU you will have to pay your countries import duties, taxes and any handling charges. It is your responsibility to find out what these are prior to ordering and your responsibility to pay them. All countries are different on these taxes, duties and handling charges.
Some products we are not able to send abroad due to transport, import and export restrictions.
Our international payment terms are:
- Payment is required in full prior to dispatch
- Payment can be accepted by PayPal or Bank Transfer (any bank transfer fees will be covered by you the buyer)
- In the event you make payment and want to cancel your order the transaction will be subject to a 10% payment value cancellation fee as well as the deduction of all costs incurred by Mad Supplies Ltd if greater than 10%.
- Any bulk orders being produced to a customer's requirements and orders including custom printing are not possible to return or cancel the order after payment being received, subject to these payment terms.
- In the rare situation that goods are found to be materially faulty, they will be returned from the delivery address and replaced.
- No goods will be reserved or held for you until payment has been received or confirmation of payment being sent has been provided.
- Receipt of payment for this order is deemed to be an agreement to these terms in addition to our standard terms as listed at MAD4TOOLS.COM
Delivery Dates
Order before 1.00 pm weekdays and we can dispatch your order for next working day delivery. Alternatively, you can choose a delivery slot up to 7 days in advance.
Does not apply to direct dispatch products or customers living in 2-3 Day and other Zones.
Delivery Addresses
We´ll deliver directly to you, to your customer or to site. It´s easy to add another delivery address to your account, just select deliver to a different address when you´re checking out.
Direct Dispatch (items marked 7/14/21 days)
Items marked 7, 14 or 21 working days are despatched directly from the supplier. You will be contacted directly by the supplier to arrange a delivery date - Monday to Friday only. Note: Direct Dispatch items cannot currently be tracked. Most Big Stuff/Direct Despatch items can only be delivered to an external ground floor location at the delivery address. A signature will be required upon delivery.
Do you need more information?
If so, please contact us to get more information.
Order Tracking
Once your item has been dispatched you will receive an email confirming this. We use a selection of different couriers to suit the requirements of the varying weight, dimensions and delivery locations and services required for each order and as such it is not always possible to provide a tracking number for deliveries, though where possible the courier's details and your consignment number will be included in the dispatch confirmation email.
If you require an update on the progress of your delivery and courier and tracking information was not included in your dispatch confirmation please allow up to 4 days for the package to arrive unless you selected a premium delivery service and then contact us for a delivery update.
NOTE: Items marked 7, 14 or 21 working days cannot be tracked as they are dispatched directly from the supplier.
Do you need more information?
If so, please contact us to get more information.
Planning Ahead
Please do not schedule or start any installation work until after you have received your order and checked all goods for any defects or missing parts. This will enable you to resolve any technical questions or to order specific additional fittings if needed.
Returns & Faulty Goods
Hopefully, you won't need to return an item, however, if you do, it is our aim to make this as simple as possible. By following the guidance below, you can help us to help you when a product is not what you expected, or is faulty. Your statutory rights are not affected by this guidance.
If you have any questions, please call our customer service team on 01179 780 174.
30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
Under our 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee you can return unwanted goods. Items should be unused, in a saleable condition, with their original packaging and with all component parts and any promotional items received. You should include your invoice and a completed returns form.
If you have any questions, please refer to our FAQ's below.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's)
If you purchased your item(s) from our website MAD4TOOLS.COM:
To return an item under the 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee you can (at your expense) either:
- Send it back via your local Post Office - click here for a Returns Form.
- Send it back via a Courier Collect service - Collections are on weekdays from 8.00 am to 6.00 pm, for more information call our customer service team on 01179 780 174.
Post Office return is not available for items over 1.5m in length or 4kg in weight. For these items please use the Courier Collect Service by calling or emailing our customer service team for further advice.
If you purchased your item(s) from our from our Amazon store:
- Log in to your Amazon account.
- Go to your Order History screen.
- Locate your order and select the Return option.
- Follow the Amazon guidelines.
If you purchased your item(s) from our from our eBay store:
- Log in to your eBay account.
- Go to your Purchase History screen.
- Find the item(s) you wish to return.
- Select the Returns option from the dropdown menu.
- Follow the eBay guidelines.
Certain items are excluded from the guarantee. These include (but are not limited to) goods that are made to measure, cut, or mixed to your requirements, custom printed. Other excluded items are macerators and water pumps. For products delivered directly from our suppliers, please call our customer service team on 01179 780 174.
If you notice any damage or shortages on your goods, please inform us within 3 days of taking delivery. We would recommend refusing any delivery that looks damaged or making note of any damage to the box when signing for your delivery. If you have notified us of any Damage or Shortages with your goods within 3 days of receiving your delivery, we will either make good any non-delivery, replace, or repair any goods that are damaged or defective upon delivery, or refund to you the amount paid by you for the goods in question.
Any faulty good claims that have been reported within 3 days of taking delivery, must be returned within 30 days of taking delivery. You should include your invoice and a completed returns form. Please ensure that all petrol products are drained of fuel and oil before return. If the item has already been installed, call us on 01179 780 174 for further advice.
If you purchased the item more than 30 days ago, we aim to get the problem put right as quickly as possible. In most instances, relative to the product in questions warranty, we will either offer a repair or where this is not possible, we will replace the item with the same or an equivalent model.
- Check if the manufacturer offers a helpline, repair or warranty service. Using this service may be the fastest way to get the problem put right.
If there is no warranty or repair service, or if you wish to return a faulty item:
- Call us on 01179 780 174.
Please remember to include your invoice, returns form and ensure that all petrol products are drained of fuel and oil before return. If the item has already been installed, call us on 01179 780 174 for further advice.
If the item has already been installed, call us on 01179 780 174 for further advice.
Refunds to card and PayPal can take 3-5 working days (bank funded PayPal payments can take up to 10 working days). If you have not received your refund within the timeframe detailed, please contact us with your order and refund details.
A cancellation can be made up to 30 days from point of order via phone, email or mail (MAD4TOOLS.COM,
Bridge House, Block 4, Cater Road, Bishopsworth, Bristol. BS13 7TW).
NOTE: Certain items are excluded from this, these include (but are not limited to) goods that are made to measure, cut or mixed to your requirements, custom printed or other possible exclusions include macerators and water pumps.
Can't find what you're looking for? Call our customer service team on 01179 780 174.


text:
Lama and Arnold Blitz New Route in Alaska
Alpinists David Lama and Dani Arnold have established a new route on the formidable Moose's Tooth in Alaska. Their new route—Bird of Prey—takes a striking path through the previously unclimbed headwall on the Tooth's east face.
Alpinists David Lama and Dani Arnold have established a new route on the formidable Moose's Tooth in Alaska. Their new route—Bird of Prey—takes a striking path through the previously unclimbed headwall on the Tooth's east face.
"It's a logical line," Arnold told Rock and Ice. "We tried to climb the direct and easiest line to the top, but it was hard enough!"
Lama explains that this was both he and Arnold's first trip to Alaska, and upon arrival they had no specific objective. "We basically flew in without an idea what we would go for," says Lama. "The day we landed it was cloudy and the mountains were hidden, but the next morning we saw the east face of the Moose's Tooth for the first time and felt pretty attracted to the unclimbed headwall."
Lama and Arnold set up base-camp on the Buckskin glacier on April 10, and spent the next day scoping their potential route with binoculars, trying to pick a path that would connect the cracks and weaknesses of the east face. The pair decided on a line that begins on (VI WI6+ A2), which was established by Ben Gilmore and Kevin Mahoney in 2004 and subsequently starts on the visionary 1981 Jim Bridwell and Mugs Stump route Dance of the Woo-Li Masters (VI 5.9 WI4+ A4, 1520m). However, Lama and Arnold decided to try and branch off from Arctic Rage, forging a new line directly through the steep east face headwall.
The next day, they awoke at 2 a.m., brewed coffee, and skied to the base of the wall. "We soloed the first part of the face until about 100m [328 feet] higher than where our route leaves the line of Arctic Rage," says Lama. "From there we climbed nine really demanding pitches to our bivy in the middle of the headwall."
The pair spent a cold night bivied on the headwall and started climbing at first light the following day. Leaving all but their climbing gear and a backpack with food, water, and extra down-jackets at the bivy spot, Lama and Arnold committed to the deceiving upper-headwall. "The terrain was way more difficult than we expected," says Lama, "but we made good progress climbing light." The duo climbed 17 pitches and reached the summit at 6 p.m. Wasting no time, Lama and Arnold decided to rappel back to their bivy, descend the rest of the route and ski back to base camp in one push. They finally arrived at base-camp on April 14, at 2 a.m.
Lama suggests the grade of 6a [5.10a], M7+, 90-degrees, A2, for Bird of Prey>. As for the crux of the route, Arnold says, "There is not a particular hard pitch, but it's very sustained and exposed! We needed all skills of alpine climbing. Ice, rock, mixed and aid-climbing."


text:
This webinar presentation is based on findings from a Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) study of 50 local governments that were declared 100% sanitized/open defecation free almost five years ago. Researchers found that almost 90 percent of households in the areas studied have sustained use of a latrine that adequately confines feces, but that hygienic maintenance is relatively poor.
Date: Thursday, July 21, 2011, 8:30-10:00 EST/ 13:30-15:00 GMT
Venue: Virtual, via AdobeConnect, Click 'Enter as a Guest', Type your full name and click 'Enter Room'
To learn about the WSP study, see the full Technical Report or Research Brief.
For more information about the seminar read see the full announcement


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BS&T 2012 Executive Summit: The Conference in Quotes
The seventh annual Bank Systems & Technology Executive Summit has come and gone, but the memories will last a lifetime. Customer-centric channel strategies, big data, the future of branches and the evolution of IT's role in financial services were just some of the topics discussed during the three-day event. Here are our picks for some of the most memorable and thought-provoking quotes from the conference.
1. Good Advice
You cannot sell services like you sell a tube of toothpaste.
-- Nancy Stephens, Associate Professor of Marketing at the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, on the challenges banks face selling their products.
Bryan Yurcan is associate editor for Bank Systems and Technology. He has worked in various editorial capacities for newspapers and magazines for the past 8 years. After beginning his career as a municipal and courts reporter for daily newspapers in upstate New York, Bryan has ... View Full Bio


text:
These beautiful, individually made solid silver cufflinks have been designed by Vicki Ambery-Smith. Vicki's jewellery and silverware are finely detailed interpretations of buildings from all over the world. We feel very proud to have Selwyn chapel included in her portfolio.
Handcrafted to a high quality, these sterling silver cufflinks will add an interesting touch to any shirt, and they make the perfect gift. Intricate detailing throughout, perfect for anyone who has spent time at Selwyn, in ministry or been a member of the choir.
Set on a strong stem with a torpedo clasp, each pair is individually crafted and fully hallmarked - 925 sterling silver.
Money raised goes directly towards student support funds.
Available Options:
Shipping:Free Uk Delivery
Copyright © 2023 Selwyn Merchandise StorePowered by osCommerce


text:
[Ari White, whom we interviewed on our internet radio show this past Wednesday, has graciously allowed us to re-post one of his incredibly delicious recipes. It first appeared on May 22, 2011 on Gourmet Kosher Cooking
Sesame Seared Tuna with Mango Jicama Salad
- 1 pound Ahi Tuna – sushi grade
- 1/4 cup white sesame seeds
- Canola oil for searing
- 2 large ripe mangoes, peeled, seeded and diced
- 1 medium jicama, peeled and diced
- 1/2 lime juiced
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Combine the mango, jicama and lime juice in a bowl; season with salt & pepper to taste.
- Pat your tuna dry and then cut the loin into 2-inch x 2-inch square segments the length of the loin (or shorter based on your pan size) for appetizer-size portions, or larger for entree portions. Season with salt and pepper and then roll the tuna in white sesame seeds coating as much of the loin as is possible.
(Chef Andy's note***Then wrap the tuna loins tightly in plastic wrap and freeze 3 hours – 3 weeks in advance*** When cooking only one loin this may not be entirely necessary, but when producing in mass as we do it regularly; this trick guarantees that every single loin stays perfectly pink and beautiful in the center while allowing for a flawless crust to develop on the outside… it's idiot proof.)
- Heat your pan (we love cast iron skillets, but a non-stick will work as well) for a few minutes until scorching hot. Drizzle oil in the pan and sear each side for 30-45 seconds; then set aside. We like the center raw, not rare, raw which requires only the best sushi grade tuna available. (At this point you can either slice and serve your tuna, or wrap it up tightly where it will hold in a fridge for up to 36 hours. When ready to serve, slice the tuna against the grain and present over the mango & jicama salad.
- Garnish with a smoked garlic aioli (or a spicy mayonnaise) and top with cilantro.
by Chef Andy Blackman and Ari White, Gemstone Catering
Enjoy, gentle reader, enjoy!


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Introducing: Mog Madness!
It is March, and for college basketball fans, this means March Madness. In response to this craziness over making a lil orange ball go through some knotted up string, JD Kenada of Amateur Azerothian, Ancient of Tome of the Ancient, and I will be hosting and judging this battle of breastplates, this contest of corsets, this feud of footwear – welcome to Mog Madness!
Here is a quick rundown of the contest particulars:
- Mog Madness will consist of five rounds.
- The first round will be two weeks, with the remaining four rounds one week each.
- There will be a "Mog build" criteria for each round that will be announced at the start of each round.
- Each participant is allowed one entry per round.
- Your submission can be an in-game screenshot, or a shot from a program such as MogIt.
- The judges will look at overall thoughts, creativity, and originality to give each entry a score, and the top scores will move on each round until the finals.
- The number of participants to advance will be announced after the deadline for the first round, at which point we'll know how many people we have taking part.
Mog Madness Round One:
- When: March 12th – March 23rd (judging results revealed March 25th)
- Who: Open to anyone who wishes to enter.
- How: Send an e-mail with your screenshot(s) to email@example.com or post your entry on the Mog Madness page of Amateur Azerothian, Tome of the Ancients, or Effraeti's RP.
- Mog Requirement: The first round of Mog Madness merely requires a cloth outfit. That means Mages, Warlocks, and Priests are all open season for your submissions (though no using class-specific gear outside of the class you choose to use -so no Mages in something like this).
The only other detail to note in the first round is the "Judge's Choice." For the first round only, each judge can use their power to give someone a pass into the second round. Those lucky persons will be exempt from the voting process and move on no questions asked… though each judge will give a brief snippet explaining why they chose the entry they did.
So start up your add-ons, warm-up your search engines, choose your contestant of the cloth, and submit your style for Round 1!
~ Effy
Also, a big THANKS to Ancient for our gorgeous logos for this event!
- Posted in: Blog Challenges ♦ Contests ♦ Outfits/Transmog ♦ WoW Stuff
- Tagged: Mog Madness, Transmogrification
23 Comments
Oh my sounds exciting!
Covering my three bases:
Like Matty, I'm covering my bases! Here's my submission!!
- Mog Madness Is Here! « Amateur Azerothian
- Transmogrification Tuesday – A Poison Apple a Day! « Harpy's Nest Blog
- Guardian of Cenarius, Lodge 12 Meeting Outfit « Tome of the Ancient
- MOG MADNESS round 1: the Wise Woman « Kamalia et alia
- Mog Madness! Round One « THE WOW DEBUTANTE
- Mog Madness – Round One: Elune-Adore « Harpy's Nest Blog
- Mog Madness Countdown « Amateur Azerothian
- Mog Madness Round One Entry | missescake
- MOG MADNESS round 2: Glaive of the Nether-Beast Master « Kamalia et alia
- Mog Madness: Round Three Rules « Amateur Azerothian
- Mog Madness: Round Two Results, Third Round Rules « Tome of the Ancient
- Alanna's Mix « Bubbles of Mischief
- Mog Madness – Round Three « Bubbles of Mischief
- Mog Madness: Round Four Rules « Amateur Azerothian
- Mog Madness – Round Four « Bubbles of Mischief
- Mog Madness: The Final Round! « Amateur Azerothian
- Mog Madness: Round Four Results, Final Round Rules « Tome of the Ancient
- Bubbles of Mischief » Mog Madness – Round Four
- Mog Madness - Round Three » Bubbles of Mischief


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"The Grand Illusion" — Believing We See the Situation
Posted by The Situationist Staff on April 2, 2008
* * *
When Jeremy Wolfe of Harvard Medical School, speaking last week at a symposium devoted to the crossover theme of Art and Neuroscience, wanted to illustrate how the brain sees the world and how often it fumbles the job, he naturally turned to a great work of art. He flashed a slide of Ellsworth Kelly's "Study for Colors for a Large Wall" on the screen, and the audience couldn't help but perk to attention. The checkerboard painting of 64 black, white and colored squares was so whimsically subtle, so poised and propulsive. We drank it in greedily, we scanned every part of it, we loved it, we owned it, and, whoops, time for a test. Dr. Wolfe flashed another slide of the image, this time with one of the squares highlighted. Was the highlighted square the same color as the original, he asked the audience, or had he altered it? Um, different. No, wait, the same, definitely the same. That square could not now be nor ever have been anything but swimming-pool blue . . . could it? The slides flashed by. . . . We in the audience were at sea and flailed for a strategy. By the end of the series only one thing was clear: We had gazed on Ellsworth Kelly's masterpiece, but we hadn't really seen it at all.
The phenomenon that Dr. Wolfe's Pop Art quiz exemplified is known as change blindness: the frequent inability of our visual system to detect alterations to something staring us straight in the face. The changes needn't be as modest as a switching of paint chips. . . . In an interview, Dr. Wolfe also recalled a series of experiments in which pedestrians giving directions to a Cornell researcher posing as a lost tourist didn't notice when, midway through the exchange, the sham tourist was replaced by another person altogether. [For a related study, see the video below.]
Beyond its entertainment value, symposium participants made clear, change blindness is a salient piece in the larger puzzle of visual attentiveness. What is the difference between seeing a scene casually and automatically . . . . In both cases the same sensory information, the same photonic stream from the external world, is falling on the retinal tissue of your eyes, but the information is processed very differently from one eyeful to the next. What is that difference? At what stage in the complex circuitry of sight do attentiveness and awareness arise, and what happens to other objects in the visual field once a particular object has been designated worthy of a further despairing stare?
Visual attentiveness is born of limited resources. "The basic problem is that far more information lands on your eyes than you can possibly analyze and still end up with a reasonable sized brain," Dr. Wolfe said. Hence, the brain has evolved mechanisms for combating data overload, allowing large rivers of data to pass along optical and cortical corridors almost entirely unassimilated, and peeling off selected data for a close, careful view. In deciding what to focus on, the brain essentially shines a spotlight from place to place, a rapid, sweeping search that takes in maybe 30 or 40 objects per second, the survey accompanied by a multitude of body movements of which we are barely aware: the darting of the eyes, the constant tiny twists of the torso and neck. We scan and sweep and perfunctorily police, until something sticks out and brings our bouncing cones to a halt.
The mechanisms that succeed in seizing our sightline fall into two basic classes: bottom up and top down. Bottom-up attentiveness originates with the stimulus, with something in our visual field that is the optical equivalent of a shout: a wildly waving hand, a bright red object against a green field. Bottom-up stimuli seem to head straight for the brainstem and are almost impossible to ignore, said Nancy Kanwisher, a vision researcher at M.I.T., and thus they are popular in Internet ads.
Top-down attentiveness, by comparison, is a volitional act, the decision by the viewer that an item, even in the absence of flapping parts or strobe lights, is nonetheless a sight to behold. When you are looking for a specific object — say, your black suitcase on a moving baggage carousel occupied largely by black suitcases — you apply a top-down approach, the bouncing searchlights configured to specific parameters, like a smallish, scuffed black suitcase with one broken wheel. Volitional attentiveness is much trickier to study than is a simple response to a stimulus, yet scientists have made progress through improved brain-scanning technology and the ability to measure the firing patterns of specific neurons or the synchronized firing of clusters of brain cells.
Recent studies with both macaques and humans indicate that attentiveness crackles through the brain along vast, multifocal, transcortical loops, leaping to life in regions at the back of the brain, in the primary visual cortex that engages with the world, proceeding forward into frontal lobes where higher cognitive analysis occurs, and then doubling back to the primary visual centers. En route, the initial signal is amplified, italicized and annotated, and so persuasively that the boosted signal seems to emanate from the object itself. The enhancer effect explains why, if you've ever looked at a crowd photo and had somebody point out the face of, say, a young Franklin Roosevelt or George Clooney in the throng, the celebrity's image will leap out at you thereafter as though lighted from behind.
Whether lured into attentiveness by a bottom-up or top-down mechanism, scientists said, the results of change blindness studies and other experiments strongly suggest that the visual system can focus on only one or very few objects at a time, and that anything lying outside a given moment's cone of interest gets short shrift. The brain, it seems, is a master at filling gaps and making do, of compiling a cohesive portrait of reality based on a flickering view.
"Our spotlight of attention is grabbing objects at such a fast rate that introspectively it feels like you're recognizing many things at once," Dr. Wolfe said. "But the reality is that you are only accurately representing the state of one or a few objects at any given moment." As for the rest of our visual experience, he said, it has been aptly called "a grand illusion." Sit back, relax and enjoy the movie called You.
To read the entire article and view a demonstration of the effect it describes, click here. To read Dan Gilbert's description of how change blindness can contribute to our inability to perceive and respond to policy problems (specifically, climate change), see "The Heat Is On."
3 Responses to ""The Grand Illusion" — Believing We See the Situation"
April 3, 2008 at 5:01 pm
[…] Situationist excerpted an article about change blindness and included this related […]
August 27, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Fine, but what was the gorilla there for? Was he monitoring the experiment? Making sure no human subjects were harmed during the course of this video?
October 20, 2014 at 1:19 pm
[…] The Situationalist The Grand Illusion […]


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CELAYA, Mexico – Mexico is on track to become the United States' No. 1 source of imported cars by the end of next year, overtaking Japan and Canada in a manufacturing boom that's turning the auto industry into a bigger source of dollars than money sent home by migrants.
The boom is raising hopes that Mexico can create enough new jobs to pull millions out of poverty as northbound migration slows sharply, but critics caution that most of the new car jobs are low-skill and pay too little. Mexico's low and stagnant wages have kept the poverty rate between 40 and 50 per cent since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement two decades ago.
An $800 million Honda plant that opened Friday in the central state of Guanajuato will produce more than 200,000 Fit hatchbacks and compact sport-utility vehicles a year, helping push total Mexican car exports to the U.S. to 1.7 million in 2014, roughly 200,000 more than Japan, consulting firm IHS Automotive says. And with another big plant starting next week, Mexico is expected to surpass Canada for the top spot by the end of 2015.
"It's a safe bet," said Eduardo Solis, president of the Mexican Automotive Industry Association. "Mexico is now one of the major global players in car manufacturing."
When NAFTA was signed two decades ago, Mexico produced 6 per cent of the cars built in North America. It now provides 19 per cent. Total Mexican car production has risen 39 per cent from 2007, to nearly 3 million cars a year. The total value of Mexico's car exports surged from $40 billion to $70.6 billion over that span.
"I congratulate Honda for its having confidence in Mexico, for having total confidence in the development of our country," said Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who attended the opening of the plant in the town of Celaya along with Honda CEO Takanobu Ito. "They're contributing to two basic objectives, generating wealth and creating jobs in this country."
Manufacturing in Mexico is now cheaper than in many places in China, though the vast majority of the cars and trucks made in North America are still produced in the U.S. for domestic consumption and export to other countries.
And many of the vehicles built in Mexico are assembled with parts that are produced in the United States and Canada and cross the border without tariffs under NAFTA.
"There was a realization that there were some structural issues that had to be resolved in the auto industry to make it more competitive again. Moving parts, not all of the production, to Mexico was a good way to deal with that," said Christopher Wilson, an expert in U.S.-Mexico economic relations for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Mexico's government and the car industry say the automotive industry has become the primary source of foreign currency for Mexico, surpassing oil exports and remittances from immigrants in the United States.
Migration to the U.S. has slowed dramatically in recent years, though experts attribute that mostly to tougher enforcement and a slower U.S. economy. Despite successes such as the car-making boom, Mexico still isn't creating nearly enough formal jobs for the hundreds of thousands of people entering the workforce each year.
While Mexico's official unemployment rate dropped to 4.62 per cent in the last quarter of 2013, nearly 7 per cent of working-age people work less than 15 hours a week and nearly 60 per cent scrape by in off-the-books jobs such as street vendors or day labourers, whose benefits are virtually nonexistent and whose wages are often below the legal minimum.
The Mexican government announced Friday that the economy grew a meagre 1.1 per cent in 2013, its worst performance since 2009. The government is hoping to see 3.5 per cent growth this year.
Mexico has roughly 580,000 auto workers, whose numbers have risen by 100,000 since 2008. They are paid about $16 a day, more than $4 less than what the average U.S. autoworker is paid every hour. More than half of all Mexican workers earn less than $15 a day, according to Mexico's census agency.
Many car factories in Mexico operate with pro-company unions and some workers have fought without success to form independent unions that could bargain for higher pay and better pensions.
"It's one of the most modern industries that is generating the most money for the country," said Huberto Juarez, an auto industry expert at the Autonomous University of Puebla. "It's not right that these workers are making so little."
Solis, the president of the auto industry association, acknowledges wages are low compared to the U.S. and Canada, but says the boom is creating a new generation of young engineers and funding automotive research in Mexico. A handful of Mexican entrepreneurs have launched boutique car companies in recent years, although their production remains insignificant compared to that of foreign manufacturers in Mexico.
"It's not only about lower salaries. That's short-sighted. It is a component of a larger equation that has to do with the expertise we are developing," Solis said.
Much of the new production is by Japanese companies drawn by the ability to move parts into and out of Mexico without tariffs. Local governments have been competing for new plants by offering tax exemptions, employee training and improved highways connecting the plants to the U.S. border and Mexican ports.
Just 25 miles from the new Honda plant, Mazda is set to open a factory next week to produce 230,000 cars a year. Nissan is expected to turn out 175,000 cars annually at a $2 billion plant it opened late last year in the nearby state of Aguascalientes. And Audi will be producing luxury models at a plant in the state of Puebla that is slated to open in 2016.
"We have gained momentum throughout the years," Economy Secretary Ildefonso Guajuardo said. "Now Mexico is attracting international attention because it has proven to have quality of production and a friendly investment climate."
Adriana Gomez Licon on Twitter: http://twitter.com/agomezlicon


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Recommendation Letter For Business For Your Needs.
Recommendation Letter For Business
suggestions for much better e-mail cover letters
If you're emailing a resume, your cover letter will supply the impression. These 8 ideas will assist you craft a much better e-mail cover letter.
As the stating goes, you do not get a 2nd chance to earn an impression. If you're working search or resume submission by means of email, the first impression any type of employer will have is from your cover letter.
When you're asked to email your work application to a firm, you could either copy as well as paste your cover letter right into the body of your email, or you can attach it as a documents, along with your resume. If you send your cover letter as an accessory, you could send it as either a PDF file or Word file. Below's just what else you need to you consider when crafting an e-mail cover letter.


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Encryption, the transformation of data into a form that prevents anyone unauthorized from understanding that data, is a fundamental technology that enables online commerce, secure communication, and the protection of confidential information.
Encryption algorithms are the mathematical formulae for performing these transformations. You provide an encryption algorithm with a key and the data you want to protect (the plaintext), and it produces an encrypted output (the ciphertext). To read the output, you need to feed the key and the ciphertext into a decryption algorithm (sometimes these are identical to encryption algorithms; other times they are closely related but different).
Encryption algorithms are designed so that performing the decryption process is unfeasibly hard without knowing the key.
The algorithms can be categorized in many different ways, but perhaps the most fundamental is the distinction between symmetric and asymmetric encryption.
Before 1973, every known encryption algorithm was symmetric. What this means is that the key used to encrypt the plaintext is the same key used to decrypt the ciphertext; if you know the key, you can decrypt any data encrypted with it. This means that the key must be kept secret—only people authorized to read the messages must know it, and those people who do know it can read every single message that uses it.
This in turn makes symmetric algorithms tricky to use in practice, because those keys must be securely transported somehow. Key transport wasn't so difficult in the 6th century BC, when the first encryption algorithm, called the Caesar cipher, was invented. If you wanted to share a key with someone, you could just tattoo the key onto the shaved head of a slave, wait for his hair to grow back, and then send the recipient of your message the slave.
Unfortunately, that approach doesn't scale very well. If you want to buy something from Amazon or do some online banking, you probably don't have the time to wait for your slave's hair to grow back, and given the multitude of e-commerce sites out there, you may not even have enough slaves to go around.
It took 2,500 years of on-and-off cryptography invention and research for a solution to be found to this problem. That solution is asymmetric encryption. With asymmetric encryption there is not one key, but two related keys. Messages encrypted with one of the keys can't subsequently be decrypted with that same key. Instead, you have to use the other key for decryption. Typically, one key is designated as the public key and is published widely. The other is designated the private key and is kept secret.
The first public key encryption algorithm: RSA
The first algorithms using asymmetric keys were devised in secret by the British government's SIGINT agency, GCHQ, in 1973. That work was not made public, however, until 1997, when the British government declassified it.
The first published, commercially available algorithm (which happened to work in much the same way as GCHQ's worked, albeit in a more generalized form) was invented in 1977, and it was called RSA after the names of its three inventors (Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman).
Symmetric algorithms essentially depend on jumbling up the plaintext in complex ways and doing so lots of times; the key is what specifies the exact jumbling up pattern that was used. Asymmetric algorithms take a different approach. They depend on the existence of hard mathematical problems. The keys here are solutions to these mathematical problems.
The problem that RSA is built around is that of integer factorization. Every integer has a unique prime factorization; that is, it can be written as a multiplicative product of prime numbers. For example, 50 is 2×52. While factorization is something that we all learn at school, it's actually a hard problem, especially when dealing with large numbers.
The naive algorithm you learn in school is called "trial division"; you divide the number you are trying to factorize by each prime number in turn, starting at 2 and working your way up, and check to see if it's wholly divisible. If it's wholly divisible then you then factorize the number that's left over, starting at the same prime as you just divided by. If it isn't, you try the next prime number. You only stop when you've tried every prime number less than or equal to the square root of the number you're trying to factorize.
This is easy enough for small numbers, but for big numbers it's very time-consuming. There are various algorithms that are a bit quicker than trial division, but only incrementally so.
RSA key pairs (that is, the pair of private and public keys) are generated in the following way:
- Choose two large, distinct prime numbers, called p and q.
- Compute p × q, and call this n. The size of this number in bits is the key length, and it gives an indication of how strong the key is: the longer, the better.
- Compute (p - 1) × (q - 1), and call this φ(n).
- Pick an integer e that is coprime with φ(n). That is to say, a prime factorization of e should have no factors shared by a prime factorization of φ(n).
- Calculate d such that d × e = 1 (mod φ(n)). This multiplication uses modulo arithmetic (also known as clock arithmetic). Modulo arithmetic wraps around. It counts normally from 0 to mod φ(n) - 1, then wraps around back to 0 again. This is much the same as the way that on a clock, the number after 12 isn't 13; it's 1.
The public key is the pair of numbers (e, n). The private key is the pair (d, n). p, q, and φ(n) must also be kept secret.
Encryption and decryption are both quite simple. A ciphertext c is generated from a plaintext m as follows:
c = me (mod n)
Decryption is similar:
m = cd (mod n)
Here's where the difficulty of integer factorization is important: if n could easily be factorized then anyone could determine p and q, hence φ(n), and hence d. If d were known to everyone then they could decrypt the messages encrypted with e with ease.
Conventionally, e, the public key, is chosen to be a smaller number than d, typically 65,537.
Since RSA's invention, other asymmetric encryption algorithms have been devised; like RSA, they're all built on the assumption that a particular mathematical problem is hard to solve, usually either integer factorization or the discrete logarithm. Surprisingly, the assumption of difficulty is not actually proven in the case of either integer factorization or the discrete logarithm, and there is a possibility that a "fast" algorithm will be devised, which could render some kinds of public key cryptography insecure.
Public key cryptography in practice
Given a public key algorithm, what's it actually good for?
Perhaps surprisingly, one of the things it's not good for is general-purpose encryption. Those exponentiation operations used in RSA's encryption and decryption (or similar operations in other algorithms) are slow and expensive to compute; as a result, RSA isn't well-suited to encrypting large chunks of data. What it is good for, however, is encrypting small pieces of data—such as the encryption keys for symmetric algorithms, which are good for encrypting large amounts of data.
An example of this is the PGP program, first released in 1991. PGP, standing for "Pretty Good Privacy," is a program for sending secure messages using a combination of symmetric and asymmetric encryption algorithms. Everyone who wants to receive PGP-secured messages publishes their PGP public key. Traditionally, this is an RSA public key, though nowadays other algorithms are also supported.
To send a secure message, you first generate a random key for use with a symmetric algorithm. You use that key and the symmetric algorithm to encrypt your message. The original PGP implementation used an algorithm called IDEA for this purpose, though modern versions offer a variety of options for this, too. You then encrypt that random key with the RSA public key and bundle the two things—symmetrically encrypted message, asymmetrically encrypted random key.
To decrypt the message, the recipient uses his private key to decrypt the random key, and then uses the random key to decrypt the message itself.
Similar schemes are used for the S/MIME secure e-mail standard: public key cryptography is used to secure keys, and symmetric cryptography is used for the bulk encryption.
Disk encryption systems like Microsoft's BitLocker also uses a similar approach on systems equipped with TPM (Trusted Platform Module) chips. These chips securely store encryption keys and in principle only allow authorized software to access them. The bulk encryption of the data on the disk uses the AES symmetric algorithm; that key is then encrypted using RSA.
The ssh network protocol widely used for remote connections to Unix-like operating systems can also use public key cryptography for logging in. Users connecting to systems by ssh generate their own key pairs and associate their public keys with their user accounts on every server they want to connect to. Each time a user connects to the server, the server verifies that they're in possession of the corresponding private key by exploiting the fact that only the private key can decrypt messages encrypted with the public key.


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The Catholic priest busted for allegedly dealing crystal meth was suspended after church officials discovered he was a cross-dresser who was having sex in the rectory at Bridgeport's St. Augustine Cathedral.
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Monsignor Kevin Wallin was relieved of his duties in May, but the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport had continued to pay him a stipend until his Jan. 3 arrest -- a day he was planning to fly to London on vacation.
Now dubbed "Msgr. Meth" by some, Wallin seemed to live a life that easily could have been ripped from the script of "Breaking Bad," the popular AMC series about a high school chemistry teacher turned crystal methamphetamine producer. At one point, Wallin was selling upwards of $9,000 of meth a week, according to his indictment.
In his post-priesthood, Wallin, 61, bought an adult specialty and video store in North Haven called Land of Oz that sells sex toys and X-rated DVDs. Investigators believe the shop helped him launder thousands of dollars in weekly profits.
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Wallin's arrest sent shock waves through the Bridgeport and Danbury communities where he was known as a charismatic speaker who was involved in many charitable activities, and who enjoyed Broadway musicals and show tunes. He often attended musicals with his mentor, former N.Y. Cardinal Edward Egan and parishioners.
"There is an evil invading our world and it has come to our church," said Maria Spencer-Fonseca, a long-time parishioner at St. Augustine as she stood outside the cathedral Thursday. "This was a work of evil -- and I am praying for the monsignor."
"I can't fathom it," said 77-year-old Therese Ruppert, a parishioner at the Church of St. Peter in Danbury, where Wallin was pastor from 1996 to 2002. "He was so spiritual. His sermons were wonderful. He had such knowledge of theology."
Wallin, who is represented by a federal public defender, is charged with possession with intent to distribute and distribution of methamphetamine. He has been detained without bond pending an arraignment next week.
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Diocese officials stressed that they had no information that Wallin was selling drugs when he was pastor of St. Augustine's Cathedral or when he previously served as pastor of St. Peter Parish.
Ordained in 1984, he served in Bridgeport from that year until 1996, when he went to Danbury. He returned to Bridgeport in 2002 and remained until his resignation in 2011.
"We had no indication he had a drug problem and never had complaints regarding him and drugs," said Diocese Spokesman Brian Wallace.
Instead, Wallace said they became concerned in the spring of 2011 when they began receiving complaints from parishioners regarding Wallin's appearance and erratic behavior.
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"We approached him and he admitted he was struggling a bit and shortly after that he resigned (July 2011) and the bishop granted him a sabbatical," Wallace said.
Wallin did go for a health assessment but then didn't go for follow-up examinations and subsequently dropped out of sight. As a result, Wallace said Wallin was suspended.
But sources knowledgeable with the case said the situation went deeper than diocese officials will publicly admit.
While pastor of St. Augustine's, sources said he often disappeared for days at a time; and rectory personnel became concerned and notified diocese officials when Wallin, sometimes dressed as a woman, would entertain odd-looking men, some who were also dressed in women's clothing and engaging in sex acts.
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In addition, diocese officials found bizarre sex toys in Wallin's residence, the sources said.
Diocese officials consulted lawyers about the situation and were assured none of Wallin's behavior appeared illegal.
After he left the church, federal authorities say, Wallin rented two apartments on Golden Hill Street in Waterbury, one for himself and the other for his alleged partner in the drug business, Kenneth "Lyme" Devries, who was also arrested in the case along with Chad McCluskey and his girlfriend, Kristen Laschober, both of California.
Federal authorities said in July 2012 they received information from an informant that Wallin was selling methamphetamine in the Waterbury area.
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They said the informant had met Wallin at a party in early 2012 and struck up an agreement for Wallin to sell the informant six ounces of the drug a week for a total of $9,000.
The arrangement last about six weeks, delayed only when Wallin had to go into rehabilitation for his own addiction to meth. During that time Wallin gave the informant the number of his California source so that the informant would still get the drug, the indictment affidavit states.
Beginning in late September 2012, an undercover officer with the Statewide Narcotics Task Force began buying meth from Wallin. During one of their meetings in Wallin's Waterbury apartment -- where he was later arrested -- the affidavit states the undercover officer saw a gallon-size plastic bag filled with crystal meth.
The telephone transactions between Wallin and the officer were recorded.
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Despite the huge amounts of cash rolling in, Wallin would often get into disputes about money and disagreements with his partners over the weight of the drugs.
Wallin also kept three cell phones, rented two Waterbury apartments and delivered meth in magazines, the affidavit shows. The crystal meth came in shipments from McCluskey and his girlfriend, Laschober, who live in California. Both also have been indicted.
Wallin also was fluent in drug lingo, and in text messages he would often use street phrases such as "5 Grover Clevelands," for $500 worth of meth or "eight balls," for an eighth of an ounce, the indictment states.
Staff writer Michael Mayko contributed to this story.